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Category Archives: All Things Google

Damage control cannot wait. The minute you have a less than favorable situation you have to take action.

I have been working with someone for the last two days who had damage done 4 years ago and it is preventing people from doing business with them to this day. They did not do damage control when they should have and it is costing them.

The nature of the complaint against them, while personal and probably at the time thought of as trivial, is anything but that because it is on Google and guess what? Google doesn’t care and Google will not take anything off their site without a court order. Think I am kidding? I am not.

Do you know how much money that can cost? Think of all those attorney fees to start with and then add up the time you spend when you could be doing things that make money.

I started digging today into this a little more since I knew I was going to write about damage control. The first thing I found was written by someone in the hospitality industry where you know testimonials go viral.

Sharlyn Lauby said this:

I spent many years of my career in the hospitality business and the first rule of thumb when dealing with customers was, “if a guest had a positive experience, they’ll tell 3 people and if they had a negative experience, they’ll tell 10.” That same idea holds true in the new media world, except the numbers have grown exponentially. Instead of it being 3 people – it’s 3,000, or instead of 10 – it’s perhaps 100,000. The numbers aren’t meant to scare you. But what should you do when something goes wrong?

Sharlyn is right – many people will see an online complaint and you end up running around with a big fire hose trying to put out the flames.

That hose can get very heavy – and tiring in the case of putting out damage control fires. Help prevent them- be proactive and do the right thing.

You have to have a Google Plus Business Page for the most obvious reason – GOOGLE LOVES GOOGLE. Can we think of a better reason?

Do you know how much web traffic goes to links that appear on the first page of Google? How about 95% – is the fog lifting?

Google Plus pages are there – seriously there on the first page of a Google search.

Let’s dive in for a moment and really define what Google Plus is and what it isn’t.

Google Plus is not Facebook. You have friends on Facebook, and you have circles on Google Plus. You have likes on Facebook and you have +1’s on Google.

Yesterday when I met (and affiliated with) our new team member who is a keyword expert for SEO friendly posting he told me that he starts every new website client up with the best Google Plus page they can have. He knows the importance of linking the website and the page.

You need to sign up for a Google business page. It’s free, and it takes only a few minutes to fill out your business information and get your page online.Now because you need to be interested mainly in search results, you want to pay attention to the following points:

Make sure your Google Plus page links to your website. This should be a no-brainer.

Use the option to create a custom URL, as in: https://plus.google.com/+YourCompanyName.

Use appropriate keywords in your tagline and your intro because this is where Google looks for them.

Populate your business page with information about the business not you. Add those pictures and videos – oh oh oh and remember YouTube is owned by whom? Google.